Tag Archives: UK Current Affairs

This was a holding budget designed to buy the government some political breathing room, and so Philip Hammond kicked the can down the road on nearly all of the major fiscal and structural issues facing Britain I intended this piece to be just a few disjointed thoughts reflecting on Philip …

Efforts by pro-EU political grandees to guilt the country into feeling bad about Brexit by elevating trivial British victories in ancient, minor trade disputes as proof of our great influence in Brussels only reveal the poverty of their ambition for Britain Another day, another ageing political grandee is wheeled out …

Not everything of value can be measured or counted, and Remainers opposing Brexit purely on economic or materialistic terms are doomed to forever misunderstand half the country when they refuse to view Brexit through any other prism If we are to have any hope of knitting Britain back together after …

Oxbridge has every incentive to admit more students from disadvantaged and minority backgrounds. If diversity has failed to improve then it is our fault as individuals, families, communities and voters for failing to provide elite universities with a bigger, better talent pool Another day, another tedious story about Oxbridge being …

After Brexit, attracting more exceptional citizen politicians and fewer mediocre career politicians is the next crucial step towards democratic renewal in Britain A worthwhile article by new Labour MP Laura Smith for LabourList underlines the urgent need for more politicians who look and sound like contemporary human beings rather than …

David Green, author of the upcoming “Inclusive Capitalism: He we can make independence work for everyone“, has a good piece in the Spectator about the extent to which the modern Conservative Party has abandoned the goal of maximising liberty. Bonus points to Green for quoting Michael Oakeshott, with whose work …

What does it mean to be a dual citizen in the Age of Brexit? Following my recent blog post lamenting our society’s devalued and transactional concept of citizenship in the Age of Brexit, I was asked by a reader to write a companion piece on the topic of dual citizenship, a …

The Left’s extreme attachment to the principle of free movement of people speaks volumes about whose interests they really serve This, by trade unionist and Blue Labour activist Paul Embery, really gets to the heart of the modern metro-Left’s extremist stance on immigration and free movement of people within the …

Great political speeches are only possible when there are great ideas to be expressed, and great leaders to express them After watching the semi-famous video of former Labour minister Peter Shore arguing passionately against Britain’s membership of the EEC during a 1970s Oxford Union debate, Mark Wallace of Conservative Home …

Is there any contemporary problem that the identity politics Left will not propose solving through the introduction of segregation? I see that the recurring debate about whether or not to introduce female-only train carriages has bubbled up again from the swamp of leftist thinking. Charlotte England tries to make the …

For many years, the most angry and bitter invective in our political discourse hailed from the far Left and Right. But now it is the supposedly rational and pragmatic centrists who are becoming unhinged and increasingly uncivilised. Like the stopped clock which still tells the correct time twice a day, …

A rare moment of honesty from an arch-Remainer New Statesman staff writer Jonn Elledge – whom I recently described as “worse than a garden variety xenophobe” for his heinous statements about elderly Brexit voters, much to his indignant outrage – recently engaged in a minor Twitter spat with Tim Montgomerie …

Renewed calls by leftists for a 100% inheritance tax force us to have the argument all over again – does the state exist to serve us, or do we exist to serve the state? I’m sure that many others have already published their own incredulous reactions, but I cannot let …

Through their arrogance and sheer incompetence, the Tories have turned an entire generation away from conservative politics. But the solution is not to go marching off to the socialist Left It doesn’t have to be like this. It doesn’t have to be the case that people under 30 years of …

Despite its complete and utter failure to deliver a solid electoral victory for the conservatives, or to meaningfully detoxify the Conservative Party’s “nasty party” image, the woolly, nebulous and thoroughly unhelpful concept of “compassionate conservatism” refuses to die. Following Theresa May’s abject failure in the 2017 general election – losing …

Donald Trump, Jeremy Corbyn, Brexit… People want meaning in their lives and a purpose in their politics that dry, centrist managerialism cannot hope to provide This, by Ted Yarbrough, is very perceptive: Man does not live by bread alone. Though a religious statement by Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew …

No courage, no backbone, no vision of their own Telegraph sketchwriter Michael Deacon reports on the rapturous reception given to Jeremy Corbyn by the Parliamentary Labour Party when he entered the Commons yesterday: Labour MPs cheered Jeremy Corbyn. Genuinely. They really did. And when I say Labour MPs, I don’t …

I know the title gives away much of the article, but I would like to focus on two key aspects: Terrorism and the Union. This is not a partisan piece, but one that tries to rise above mere party politics in an unbiased fashion. Economics are, to an extent, reversible: …

Pot, meet kettle You’ve probably already seen them countless times over the course of this general election campaign – the smug, sanctimonious internet memes bandied about by Labour supporters and other left-wing activists excoriating the Conservatives for having presided over a massive increase in the national debt since taking office in …

How can the British Left appeal to working class voters turned off by socialist paternalism and attracted by conservative messages of patriotism, freedom and self-sufficiency? Maybe a really sanctimonious internet meme will do the trick. This internet meme – currently being widely circulated on Facebook and other social media by …